I gained a whole new appreciation for Neil Patrick Harris with Dr. Horrible. He’s a very expressive actor, he’s funny and he can sing and dance.

So I went looking for him as Doogie, and I found him on hulu.com. The first two seasons are there, plus you can purchase DVDs of all four seasons. I took the time to watch through the pilot ep and I’ll definitely be watching more. The show is more serious than funny (its referred to as a comedy-drama or dramedy), although the entire premise of a 16-year old doctor was probably supposed to be funny, even though the show itself doesn’t have lots of jokes. Interestingly, Harris was actually 16 years old when the show started (in the pilot, Doogie is celebrating his 16th birthday), but he looked really young, as he still does. He’s now 35 years old, but he has that little baby face. I’ll bet he hates that.

I guess this means I’m gonna have to start watching How I Met Your Mother, now, which is unfortunately not on hulu. Oh, and if you haven’t seen Dr. Horrible yet, it’s well worth the $3.99 fee for the whole thing on iTunes.

I was always a huge Matt Frewer fan, from Max Headroom, of course, and would have watched anything he was in. But Doctor, Doctor was really good and very funny. Although there are no DVDs available, I did manage to score some youtube videos of the pilot ep, “The Search for Armand Peltzer,” and will post them here for your enjoyment. Even more fun, this is one of the three eps that Jane Brucker appeared in on the series, as Elizabeth McQueen, who works at the television station where Dr. Mike Stratford (Matt Frewer) goes to be interviewed for his book.

The clips aren’t a perfect match, and they are little grainy, but then they obviously came from someone’s video of the show. I have most of those eps on video tape myself. Although I’m pretty sure they are dead by now. Its sad, but video doesn’t last forever.

Enjoy!

Part one:

Part two:

Part 3:

If you like these, there are more on there, too!

The band’s drummer, Ricky, the school bad boy, is the guy who got her pregnant. His goal, apparently, is to sleep with as many random women as possible, in some way as payback for his father, who sexually abused him as a child. He sees a therapist or counselor, played by Ernie Hudson, who mostly spouts words of wisdom on deaf ears.

The bad boy has a pseudo girl friend, the sultry school vixen. Adrienne does have sex, but has made him hold out for the third date. She did not seem to mind, however, having sex with the big football jock, Jack, even without a date, even though he has a girlfriend, Grace.

She’s a pretty, shiny blond, just a little too sexy cheerleader, who comes from a shiny, happy WASP family, complete with Barbie and Ken parents (played by Josie Bissett and John Schneider), and a brother with Downs Syndrome. They are Christians, and Grace has promised her family that she will not have sex until she is married, and she won’t get married until after medical school. Hence, her Christian boyfriend slipping with the school bad girl.

There’s also the geeky guy, Ben, who is starting to fall in love with Amy - after just one date. Of course, there are various other and assorted people, like Amy’s two best friends, a perky little redhead who is on the yearbook staff, and a snooty black ballerina with a very commonsense attitude. Geeky guy also has friends, a small Asian chick, who likes to spout stats on teens and sex, and guy of unspecific ethnicity. There’s also a new, very young looking, counselor, who is Latino. Clearly, this is an all American, all ethnic kinda school.

I wasn’t sure if I was gonna watch it, but I had DVRed a couple of eps and since I had a little time this morning, I watched the first one. I only saw one ep, so far. I actually decided to watch it because saw that Molly Ringwald, John Schneider and Mark Derwin were in the cast. And I like all of them.

It was fairly typical of a teen show, mostly about sex, and with various necessary stereotypical teens. You know, all the kinds of kids you have to have when you have a high school. Although, I didn’t see any actual mean kids, at least not yet.

I thought the acting was a little stiff, and it seemed like they all didn’t know each other, which felt weird to me. I went to a fairly small high school, I guess, may 1,000 kids, like 350 in my class, and everyone knew everyone. It wasn’t liked we were all friends or anything, but we knew each other to say “hey” to. It just felt like this was the first day in a new school for everyone. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t even the first day of the year or anything like that, but it felt that way. That’s uncomfortable.

But for all that, I’m still interested in seeing what happens next.

Luckily, next Friday, July 18, is the start of the seventh season of Monk and the third season of Psych on USA, at 9 pm and 10 pm ET, respectively. In the meantime, remember there’s always hulu.com, where you can watch all sorts of sitcoms and other shows as well. I went through the list tonight, just to see how many sitcoms were actually on there. I counted 8, just in the A’s and the B’s. I had actually started watching Arrested Development and I haven’t finished, so maybe I can keep busy with that until next Friday.

I also noticed that they had ALF on there. I have an ALF story. Back when ALF was on, it was opposite MacGyver (which, unfortunately, is not on hulu). I loved MacGyver, but didn’t care for ALF, however, my mom insisted on watching ALF, even though she generally fell asleep during it and I ended up watching it alone. There’s actually no moral to that story, or even much of a point, it’s just that I always remember that when I think of ALF.

Oh, there are also a few eps of both Monk and Psych on hulu as well. Hopefully, there’s enough to keep us all busy until Fall.

I couldn’t tell you who all the actors were, because I didn’t really recognize them, but I did see one face I knew. Apparently, Constantine Maroulis, who finished in sixth place on American Idol Season 4, is a bad tempered music teacher, who considers himself a musical genius. But also, he appears to be playing himself, which is a little scary. Watch the clip and you’ll see what I mean. Here’s the clip:

I did a little research to see if I could find anything else out about this show, but so far it doesn’t even appear as a blip on anyone’s radar. It turns out there was another sitcom in 2006, also named “Teachers,” also with a fairly unknown cast (although I did recognize Kali Rocha from Buffy the Vampire Slayer), and that one only lasted 7 episodes. I don’t know if it was exactly the same premise cause there wasn’t too much info on that one either. I did see that that show was a copy of a show from the UK, so maybe it was different.

As for the Constantine version, I’d like to see it get picked up, just to see what he can really do. But honestly, after watching that clip, I doubt it. It didn’t seem too funny to me, but then Cavemen got picked up last year, so I guess anything is possible.

The cast included Katherine Helmond, Richard Mulligan, Cathryn Damon, Billy Crystal, Ted Wass, Robert Guillaume, and Diana Canova.

Most of them have gone on to do lots of other shows. Katherine Helmond was recently Debra’s mother on Everybody Loves Raymond, another great sitcom, and she was a voice in that movie, Cars, too. Robert Guillaume had a spin off to his own show, Benson, which was more mainstream and also really, really funny. Of course, we all know that comedian Billy Crystal turned out to be a major star. Soap wasn’t his first bit of acting, but it was before his stint on Saturday Night Live. Plus, Billy was one of the voices in Cars, as well.

Not only did the show have lots of great stars, there were also lots of guest stars worth watching, like Robert Urich, Howard Hesseman, Jack Gilford, Doris Roberts, Sorrell Booke, and Robert Englund.

If you’ve never seen Soap, you should check it out.

I have fond memories from my youth of Louise Lasser as Mary Hartman in Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. I’m sure I was probably too young to watch it at the time, as it was considered quite racy because of the topics it dealt with and, even though it was a sitcom, it didn’t air until 11:30 pm. It was more like a soap opera than a sitcom, but that was the point. It was supposed to be a parody of soap operas, hence the double name . . . people always said things twice in soaps, or so Norman Lear felt. The show also aired every day, five days a week, with no repeats, and it had no live audience or laugh track.

Along with Lasser, MH2 (as it was sometimes known) also starred Greg Mullavey, Dody Goodman, Mary Kay Place, Graham Jarvis, Debralee Scott, Martin Mull, Dabney Coleman, Marian Mercer and Doris Roberts. Some of those names should also be familiar.

MH2 was only on the air from January of 1976 until May of 1977, but because it aired five episodes a week, there were hundreds of eps. You can order some of them here from Amazon or Deepdiscount.

Also, just so you can see the kind of strange, funny, weirdness that was Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, here’s a video of Mary and the Librarian:

Remember that ep from WKRP in Cincinnati? I loved that ep, Turkeys Away, which orginally aired on October 30, 1978. Mr. Carlson (Gordon Jump) had this idea for a Thanksgiving turkey giveaway. Les Nessman (Richard Sanders), the news guy, was reporting live from the grocery store parking lot while turkeys were thrown out of a helicopter, with a banner attached to it saying “Happy Thanksgiving From WKRP”. Now that would have been crazy enough if these had been dead turkeys, what with something that heavy falling from the sky into a parking lot full of cars and people. But they threw live turkeys out of the helicopter, not realizing that turkeys can’t fly. It was funny and scary and gross, all at the same time. It was great ep and even better, you can watch it here at hulu.

It got me to thinking about how we remember the craziest things. I mean, that episode was back in the 70’s and yet, not only did I immediately think of it when I read the article, the person writing the article mentioned it as well. Clearly, sitcoms

Anyway, back to Hairspray. I really liked it. My husband left about halfway through cause he couldn’t take any more singing. The wimp. But I’m a big fan of musicals. As a matter of fact, just last week we saw Grease (or at least I saw it; my husband does actually like Grease, but there was still too much singing) and The King and I (which my husband avoided at all costs). In any case, watching Grease and Hairspray, reminded me yet again why I like John Travolta so much. Not too long ago, I saw the first DVD of the first season of Welcome Back, Kotter. (You can buy them here from Amazon.) It was great. I keep meaning to get back to the library and get the rest of the eps. In any case, back then I was talking about John Travolta and how great he is at everything he does:

I’m always amazed at how many different genres in which he has performed and excelled. He’s been in comedies, dramas and musicals. He has sung and danced, delivered jokes and acted as the evil bad man, and he’s been believable. Plus, he’s been successful in both small and big screens . . . not many actors are versatile enough to do well on both TV and in movies.

. . . and now he’s proven that he makes a pretty good woman, too!